One afternoon, they sighted a plume of smoke sketched on the sky. Two men, most likely moved by boredom rather than by bravery, volunteered to ride ahead and make a reconnaissance. Those who stayed behind inspected their powder horns and loaded their rifles. Nobody spoke, but it was apparent—from the way they fondled their guns, stirred in their saddles, and wore the arrogant look of untested courage—that they longed for some sort of confrontation. When the two scouts, who had left galloping, returned at a leisurely trot, the tracker and his men did not hide their disappointment.
“Just Indians,” one of the scouts said and had some water.
“Dying,” the other one added, reaching for his companion’s canteen.
Håkan understood that the Indians had some hides and old horses they could easily take and trade at Fort Squibb. The rest of the men approved. A kind of worried severity took over Lorimer’s face, and though he never said a word, he plainly disagreed with the party’s intentions. The naturalist made sure to ride at the front of the convoy and seemed eager to be the first to reach the Indians. As they approached the camp, they found that the few lodges that had withstood the flames had been burned down to black bones. Hanging from these shapeless structures and a few broken poles stuck in the dirt, torn skins, hides, and patches of leather sagged in the breezeless air. Not a soul in sight. Strewn amid the ruins, chunks of dried meat, gourds, painted hides, tools of different sorts, and other objects broken beyond recognition. Some sickly ponies stared at the ground. A few dogs, ears angular with attention, looked at the strangers. The fire that had almost entirely consumed the largest tent and the shelters around it was dying under the weight of its own smoke. That bubbling black stream covered the back half of the camp and then rose in a concave wave whose crest dissolved into the sky. The dogs came out to meet the riders, some growling, others with welcoming yelps, most with cool curiosity.
“They were here,” said one of the scouts, puzzled.
The tracker and the others stopped at the edge of the decimated camp and readied their weapons while pointlessly scanning for hideouts in the naked wasteland. Lorimer rode into the smoke. Håkan followed him. They covered their faces with their shirts as the smoke got thicker. The sun was reduced to a prickly twilight. In a whisper, Lorimer told his friend to stop and held up his hand for silence. They were wrapped and rewrapped by a thick, grainy whirlpool. They could have almost grabbed fistfuls of ashes from the air. The world ended right after their horses’ ears. They dismounted, and Håkan followed the naturalist into the heart of the smoke cloud. Muffled coughs came from below. They both stared at the ground, but their feet were hardly visible. Lorimer stopped, bent over, and picked up a bundle. It was a small child, its face completely wrapped in a damp cloth, like a little mummy. Håkan squatted and discovered that the smoke hovered a foot or two above ground. Lying in the dirt, almost crushed by this low black ceiling, there were over a dozen bodies. The smoke seemed to rest on their backs. All faces were covered in rags. A hand feebly clutched Håkan’s ankle, giving him a jolt.
“Get the children first,” said Lorimer.
One by one, they pulled everyone out into the fresh air. They were badly wounded and barely conscious. One of the men produced a knife but was too weak to use it. As Lorimer started to inspect their wounds, the tracker and two other men rode over after having made it around the smoke cloud.
“Sneaky bastards,” he said. “Crawled and hid under the smoke. I thought they had worked some Indian magic and vanished.”
Lorimer did not bother to look up. He was busy tending to the wounded.
“We’re loading the wagon with the hides. We’ll split the ponies,” added the tracker.
“The wagon and the ponies stay. Take the rest and leave.”
The tracker was astounded. Was Lorimer staying? A heated discussion over the ponies ensued. Soon they were both screaming. Håkan could not make out the words, but the argument ended with Lorimer getting some gold coins from his saddle satchel and sending the men off. Fuming, the tracker took the money, turned around, and told the men to pack up their loot and leave the ponies. Before going back to the wounded, Lorimer faced Håkan.
“Most of these people will die without my help,” he said. “I will stay. Fort Squibb is only a few days from here. Go with them.”
“I will stay.”
“Go.”
“I will help.”
Lorimer nodded and asked him to tie off a tourniquet on a man’s leg. How all those badly wounded people had managed to hide under the smoke was a mystery. Fractured skulls, splintered bones, chests and limbs crushed by gunshots, entrails barely held in place by shaking hands. Curiously, most of the children were conscious and more or less untroubled by the smoke. As the sooty cloud dissipated, a few relatively unscathed adults started looking around, as if they had suddenly woken up in a new, unknown land.
They were all lean. There was nothing consistent about their attire—leather robes, ponchos, trousers, loincloths, blouses, sandals, boots, bare feet, headbands, hats, kerchiefs. Underneath the gore, they were all extremely clean, unlike all the white men and women Håkan had seen since arriving in California. Up to that moment, all the faces Håkan had encountered in the desert had been vandalized by the elements—shredded skin under which the flesh glistened like a disgustingly opulent fruit that, in time, inevitably acquired the texture and color of rotten wood. But these faces revealed no struggle with their surroundings. Håkan thought that Lorimer’s face aspired to become one of those faces.
Håkan realized now that he had always thought that these vast territories were empty—that he had believed they were inhabited only during the short period of time during which travelers were passing through them, and that, like the ocean in the wake of a ship, solitude closed up after the riders. He further understood that all those travelers, himself included, were, in fact, intruders.
The man who had wielded his knife tried to attack Lorimer again but was struck down by pain. His left foot was backwards—his heel where the toes should have been, the skin twisted into a black spiral, torn at the ankle, revealing bone and tendon. There was room for awe and curiosity in Håkan’s horror. Lorimer held the furious man’s head and wiped his beaded brow.
“We are friends,” Lorimer said.
The man stared up, still enraged. Lorimer took his gun out of the holster, showed it to the man, holding it by the barrel with his thumb and index finger, like a filthy animal, and tossed it aside.
“Friends,” Lorimer repeated.
His fury yielded to confusion, but the man seemed to understand that they meant no harm. Lorimer asked Håkan to fetch his instruments, drugs, and salves from the wagon. As a first measure, they administered the sedative tincture to those who were in excruciating pain or needed to be operated on. Among those who made a quick recovery was an old man with short, very precisely trimmed white hair—an exception among his long-haired companions. Lorimer’s work would have proved impossible without his help. Nobody dared to oppose his advice or his commands. If not the leader of the community, the short-haired man was an uncontested authority, and the more drastic treatments, such as amputations, could never have been carried out without his endorsement. This man also turned out to be an excellent physician with a subtle understanding of the human frame, and he had saved invaluable resources from the plunder—a local anesthetic made with crushed herbs and mushrooms, some ashes with miraculous healing properties, and other soothing unguents and poultices. He and Lorimer discussed each case through gestures. Håkan watched and learned.